Acronis inks strategic Microsoft partnership

Acronis has engaged in a strategic partnership with Microsoft to deeply integrate its data protection products with Azure cloud services.

The new partnership will see Azure offered as a storage destination option alongside Acronis Cloud and other public cloud service vendors in upcoming Acronis product versions.

Currently, Acronis partners and customers can use Azure’s capacity for storing data, but it requires a manual installation and configuration of the Acronis Backup Gateway.

But with the new partnership, the two companies are working together to provide native integration of Acronis solutions with Azure services.

To top it off, service providers can also select their Azure storage directly from Microsoft, or Acronis can provide Azure storage costs in a single invoice.

Acronis claims the native integration of its data protection solutions with Azure will help Microsoft partners drive more revenue.

“Together with Acronis, they will be able to drive more Azure usage and generate additional revenue by upselling data protection services to existing clients and using Acronis’ complete data protection as a differentiator in the crowded market space,” Acronis said.

The partnership with Microsoft also forms part of Acronis’ overall strategy to support all workloads, delivering safety, security, accessibility, privacy and authenticity for data stored in local, cloud and hybrid environments.

By delivering full support of more than 20 platforms, native integration with PSA and RMM tools, and growing support of public cloud vendors, Acronis enables service providers to make the most out of their existing cloud arrangements.

The partnership also extends beyond Azure integration and into artificial intelligence (AI) functionality with Acronis Active Protection, which Acronis says has prevented more than 200,000 ransomware attacks across 180,000 consumer devices in the past 12 months.

“By using the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and AI tools/services with the Acronis Backup service, Acronis will be able to work on bringing valuable analytics services to market, so their customers can understand and manage their data much more effectively,” Microsoft vice president of business AI, Steve Guggenheimer, said.

Acronis said its future releases in back-up, disaster recovery and file sync share solutions will be integrated with GCP, allowing Acronis partners to offer services to "millions" of Google Cloud customers.

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